


Personal Notes (2) Crush

by longhairshortfuse



Series: Carlos's Secret Diary [2]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Awkward Crush, M/M, Science Stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 18:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1658867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longhairshortfuse/pseuds/longhairshortfuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The next instalment of Carlos's diary.  He hasn't much idea what is going on most of the time. Unless it's science.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Personal Notes (2) Crush

Creeping Fear

Ell has been busy in the community and is spending less and less time in the lab. She has been busy monitoring local wildlife, supervising the postgrads at the house that isn't there and talking to local people about the town. She says that the shadowy figures who follow just behind her left shoulder, who can almost be seen if she flicks her eyes just right but who are gone when she actually looks, have stopped making her nervous as they have not done anything evil yet although they have had ample opportunity. I suggested we run an EEG to assess her brain activity but she said she would wait until we ordered a lightweight portable model.

Fear crept over all of us today, even me, although objectively I knew there was nothing more than usual to be fearful about. I personally have always been afraid of heights and spiders and a lingering painful death, I have recently developed a dread of ridicule and public humiliation, and I am always afraid of being misunderstood. This was a different kind of fear, fear from without rather than within. Ell came by the lab because she felt it too, so we rounded up all the scientists who were not valiantly cowering under their beds. Together we took some measurements of the fear-field and built a device to counteract it. We had to use it carefully, there was a series of nasty incidents involving over-zealous use of a confidence-field-generator in the financial system a few years ago and the effects have not yet fully dissipated.

Once the fear-field had been neutralised, or at least returned to a level just above average for the town, I found a barber shop and got my hair cut. It feels so much better, cooler. 

Later, the radio turned on in the lab automatically. Did Ell set it on a timer? I must ask her how she got a timer to work properly here. I got my phone out to call her and noticed that my contacts list had been changed: there was one extra entry. I clicked it, and the name Cecil appeared with a picture of his devastating smile beside a microphone. There was a note saying "call any time" and numbers for work, home and mobile. Did the intern do that? My thumb hovered over the delete button then moved away. It would be helpful to have Cecil identified on my caller ID. I gazed at his photograph as the radio played. That Voice, That Gorgeously Mocking Voice, filled the air and my ears with more criticism of my appearance. He picked on my haircut, he publicly humiliated the barber. He has people spying on me and reporting to him about what I do. That is creepy enough for me to wonder if he is a stalker. I should be concerned or angry, not disappointed.

Some of the younger, bolder members of the science team heard it and saw me sink my head onto the desk as Cecil spoke. How they laughed at my expense. The end of the radio show made me wonder if we had failed to neutralise some small part of the fear-field. I felt a little bad about the childish amusement it gave me to think of Cecil hiding under his desk. My mind flicked back to my recent dream and I felt a welcome, guilty flutter. How could I want so much something, someone, so wrong for me? And so soon after my last mistake?

 

About Time

Today we had an unusual pest problem to deal with. Someone, accidentally I hope, opened a time-rift in the recreation centre auditorium during the PTA meeting and a few pterodactyls got through. They were attracted like magpies to the glint of spectacles and attacked people wearing glasses. Nobody bothered to count how many pterodactyls came in, or how many went back again. How could the centre staff be so unscientific? And why didn't they call us? One pterodactyl made it as far as the lab. We caught it for study and secured it in the largest of the basement cages.

The time rift caused a few other problems, especially with curious bystanders who stuck their heads through to see what was on the other side. I sent Ell to interview them, but she could make no sense of anything they said. Not even words, she said, just cackling like crows and magpies.

I escaped out of the lab for the city council meeting about Radon Canyon. The radiation warnings are being removed because they are ugly and made of lead which is toxic. I pointed out that as the rocks emit radon gas, the canyon itself is toxic as well as radioactive and the warnings should stay to stop people from going there. The lead doors won't help protect anyone against that level of radiation, staying as far away from the canyon as possible is the safest option. I made my opinion very clear and spoke in simple terms. Although I didn't ask, Ell tried to help me by giving me some hints like, "Don't say the reading on my GM Tube and rate-meter is two to the power of twelve standard deviations above the mean for similar geological and desert areas of the US and people need to have sufficient information to allow them to make an informed decision about whether or not they enter the canyon, instead say: there's a ton of radiation coming from that canyon and you shouldn't go there." 

My contribution to the council meeting was cut short when I had to leave urgently because my time rift monitor, which I had considerately set to silent mode, started vibrating like crazy. The measurements were very worrying, they showed that the rift was sucking time out of the surrounding area and soon we would run out completely. I had to muster the science team and do something to close the rift properly. The postgrads brought our TimeRightR temporal disturbance management system, the latest model but still not exactly portable. They lugged it all the way to the recreation centre, taking turns at carrying and dragging. Ell went ahead to make sure there was a suitable electricity supply and I called the mayor's office to ask if she could arrange for all the town's power to be diverted temporarily to the grid that served the centre. Someone took a message and it must have got through because there was enough power and the streetlights all went off for a few seconds as we turned the TimeRightR on. The power surge melted some of the TimeRightR's circuits but not before a pair of black-suited and sun-shaded, stern-faced individuals threw what looked like a bag of skin, bones and gore through the disappearing rift. 

There was no point taking the TimeRightR back to the lab although we salvaged a few undamaged circuit boards for spares. When we got back, the postgrad we left in charge of uploading today's data was unconscious on the floor and the pterodactyl I had hoped to study and maybe train as a deterrent to thieves was gone. From now on, we will have an armed scientist on duty in the lab at all times. I'll get the postgrads to draw up a fair on-call roster and Ell can purchase suitable weapons. 

Cecil got pterodactyls confused with pteranodons. What an ass. They are from totally different time zones. I shouted at the radio when he said pteranodons, I guess someone heard. I think that most of what we say is listened to because I found a few bugs in the lab. I removed them but next day they were back again in the same places so we have to be careful about what we talk about. Five minutes after I yelled at the radio, he made a correction. He mentioned me (and my hair) again and reported that I disagreed with the council about Radon Canyon so maybe he knows I'm trying to help the community even though my comments were deleted from the meeting minutes. I don't fully understand why it is important to me that Cecil sees I care about his town.

It is a silly infatuation, a harmless crush I have developed brought on by being in a strange, very strange place. Maybe if I indulge it a little, it will burn out and leave me in peace. At least it has given me something else to think about when I wake in the small hours instead of dwelling on the reason why I was so keen to accept this job.

 

Shape

There have been many odd occurrences to keep us busy recently. The town's Green Market actually sold real fruit and vegetables this week instead of just being painted green. I was in dire need of vitamins and trace minerals, so I bought enough plant material for myself, Ell and however many of the postgrads cared about their health. 

A local young sports celebrity began to grow a second head, subjectively better looking and definitely smarter than the original. He and his mother both refused my request to study the new head. I will suggest to Ell that she ask for an interview, she is better with people than me. If this boy has genuinely grown a new head with an independent brain, Ell will be able to complete her paper on internal versus external conflict and duality. 

Cecil, rich-voiced and infuriatingly beautiful Cecil, described a shape, a monolith, that appeared without prior notice in front of his radio station. Of course I wanted to see for myself. Cecil called it indescribable, but that is a description in itself. It was large and appeared to be approximately cuboid, but couldn't be accurately measured as its dimensions fluctuated. It crackled and sparked when approached. I warned the postgrads to stay well back. It alternated between taking in energy from the surroundings, evidenced by a bird that flew too close and froze in an instant, and letting energy out in the form of electrical discharge dancing over its surfaces. The overall trend was energy absorption until it emitted an impressive and deadly red arc discharge into the building. The shape was eventually moved, for safety, after it vaporised an intern. 

There were auditions at the radio station. Ell and I helped out with radiation screening of all the candidates. I hoped and feared that I would encounter Cecil, but he was not in any of the places where I looked. He has some strange ideas, that the moon is watching us, about the sky and the Earth and the lights, reality. I wanted to see him, talk to him, call his name, use the number he had put on speed-dial on my phone to tell him that he exists, we exist, I want him to be real for me. But does the Cecil I want, the one in my fantasy, exist? He didn't mention me today. He didn't mention me last time either. I think I'd rather have the heat of ridicule than this cool silence of indifference. 

I had a version of my dream again. In daylight. It crept up on me when my guard was down sitting at my workbench in the lab. In this version, I imagined that Cecil visited the lab to interview me about my study of the shape, I gave him a tour and we used the darkness of the basement cages and humming of the lab power supply as cover from the prying postgrads and the bugs. I returned to reality with a jolt as a door banged, fastened my loose lab coat to disguise my embarrassing discomfort and went upstairs to my apartment to dream in private and a little more vividly.


End file.
